


Angels Have No Love For Humans

by Lothlorienx



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Modern Fantasy, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mythology - Freeform, Mythology References, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Supernatural - Freeform, Supernatural Elements, myth
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:04:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5937880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lothlorienx/pseuds/Lothlorienx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the scriptures, it was written that an angel's face could never be seen by mortal eyes. Not without the pain of death. But there was no law that said mortals could not see a picture. However, that picture was the start of something long and complicated...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Angel and The Artist

"So what do you look like?" the artist asked, his pencil tapping against the blank piece of paper before him.

He waited and listened, his heart pounding in his chest. He didn't really know what to expect. Thousands of different thoughts ran through his mind, each one completely different from the last, but nothing really seemed to stick into place. It was too strange, too bizarre a thought for him to conceive. So he waited and listened, his ears pricking at every little sound he heard or thought that he had heard.

Behind the door came no sound.

She—or rather it—was silent as it thought.

Finally, a voice, deep and metallic sounding, rang out through the air, going through the thick wooden door as if it wasn't even there at all.

"Your mirror does nothing to truly capture what I truly look like," said the angel behind the locked door.

The artist could say nothing to that.

All he had been told was the obvious, that a human or a mortal of any kind must never truly look upon an angel's naked face, for if they did they would die, their blood turning to mercury and their brain solidifying as their soul exited the earthly dimension. And if you could die simply by looking at an angel's true face, he could imagine that nothing else on Earth would truly capture the true horror and beauty of their true selves.

He looked down at the blank paper before him, all his pencils and markers and paints and brushes splayed out before him on the table.

No matter what, he was determined to write her face down, make her apparent on some form, so that humans could see her face as accurately as they could, without pain of death resting upon their shoulders. He would give it his all, pour his heart and soul and blood into this painting. He would make the angel's face as accurate as he could.

This he swore to himself.

"I don't think anything here is going to capture you accurately. Just try," he shouted at the angel behind the locked door of the bathroom.

There was no response for the longest time. The artist sat in agony, waiting impatiently for her first words, for her first description of herself. Itself. His bare foot was tapping against the wooden floor of the apartment, and he chewed on his lip. He grew more anxious by the second.

For a split second, he thought that the angel had left him.

If it were not for the overwhelming presence within the air, bouncing off the walls and pushing into his soul, he would have believed that she—it—had left. It was an irrational fear, but humans were prone to irrational fears. The angel had said as much when she—it—had first come to him, explaining what it was that she wanted and what it was that she was.

A small little grain of disbelief remained in his being, somewhere deep down.

But this was the real thing.

She sat before him in his bathroom, door locked, looking into the mirror to describe her face for the artist to draw and show the world. An angel's face could never be looked at, but that didn't stop the mortals from wondering. And there was no law of physics that said that an angel could not describe it, have a human draw it, and show the world.

Inside the bathroom, as the angel stared at her face, choosing her words carefully to tell the artist, waves of fear and excitement flowed through her. She was breaking many of the laws that governed the inter-dimensions and multiverses, and she could think of nothing more exciting.

It was rare for an angel to feel anything like this, but she was slowly morphing into something else. She had nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

The angel took a deep breath, looking at her face once more, turning slowly in the mirror before taking a deep breath and speaking to the artist once more.

"Prepare to make your first markings. I am going to speak of my face now."

The artist sprang into life, his pencil hovering about the blank page. He was so excited tears started springing into his eyes. He couldn't believe it, and his whole body felt jittery. This was it, this was what was coming to him.

"Firstly, my face is heart shaped, but slightly bigger than most humans. And my neck is long. Right now, my ears are about the same size as an average female human's, but if you were to look into them you would see straight into nothingness. It is dark past the canals of my ears, and my hair that comes from my head covers my ears most of the time."

The artist's pen flew away on the paper, sketching out the neck and shape of her face. Sprouting from the form of the heart shaped face sketched in graphite, ears budded out from her skull, and the artist drew thick circles of black in the center. The angel had stopped talking, giving him time to sketch out all that she had said so far.

With her thousands of eyes upon her body, and her unhindered consciousness, she could see him sketching her face. It started out fairly accurately, she concluded, and she liked watching him work. Through the molecules of the airs and the combined subconscious she had to the mortal working away in the living room, she watched and waited while he drew her.

Once he had finished the basics, she spoke again.

"My nose is fairly tall, spanning almost the length of my entire face, and it is very powerful. An angel's nose is rendered into reality simply by an angel's will, and it does more than just smell. The nose can have at least ten senses in it, and it is powerful enough to smell the emotions between dimensions. My forehead is fairly flat…"

The angel paused again, waiting for the artist to sketch all of this out. Ever so slowly, the angel saw the likeliness slowly take form against the paper. It looked nothing like her yet, but she knew that it took more than just a couple of simple details to truly capture the essence of a person. Mortal or not. Her eyes would be the hardest of all, so she was saving them for last.

"My lips are thick and fairly dark, and for teeth I have teeth that are white—perhaps more akin to ivory in this lighting—and they are sharp and large. They resemble that of a smaller lion's teeth, but within a human shaped mouth. My mouth and my lips can do many things: smile and laugh and frown and pout and pucker and kiss. Anything you could do…"

Pause.

"I will describe my hair now. It is dark, akin to black but with the color black being the lighter of the two…but for now I will say black, for no mortal can see how dark it actually is. The texture of my hair is coarse, wooly, and it is very long. It cascades down my back for about one yard in length, and it is braided. The locks are in many different braids…much as the ancient Egyptians wore their hair."

As the angel spoke, she pulled a few braided locks into her sight, clutching them in her hand as she looked at them. She believed she had described them well, and as the artist worked away at drawing the braided locks upon her scalp, she saw that he was getting them right. It was the comment about the Egyptians that really made him think in the right direction, but the angel could sense that comment was starting to create a turmoil in his head.

The Egyptians…

The angel felt his thoughts running around in his head, theism running rampant as a hundred and more different scriptures and stories and mythological tales ran through his mind. Old passages, and religious lore, and folk legends. All sorts of things as he struggled to put the pieces together. He had been wondering about the angel for the longest time, ever since she first graced him with her presence, but he hadn't had the courage to ask.

He wanted to, and the angel felt that he now would, when he had finished drawing her likeness.

They were all pretty much questions about religion, and she felt an emotion come to her. One of tiredness and fatigue. Questions such as those she had no care for.

"My skin shall be next. You have seen my skin, yes?"

"Yes," he replied from the other room. "When I first saw you, I saw your skin. And I can remember it fairly well."

"Still, I must speak it to you," the angel said back, and turned her gaze to the mirror once more. Dropping her strands of hair, she glanced back and forth between her outstretched arm and the reflection staring back at her.

"My skin is the color of bronze, and it looks as molten metal does. Call it like a molten bronze. Upon my skin, there is no texture. No skin cells and no fingerprints and no wrinkles where the joints bend. No crows feet or laugh lines upon my face, either. The normal texture of skin, with small little hairs, does not apply to me. But there is a bit of membrane upon the surface, like that of a bat's wing. If you look closely, you will see black veins webbed across it. In my veins flows a substance that looks like mercury."

Mercury? How was he supposed to sketch that? Right now he was drawing her face, what she looked like, and her inner anatomy wasn't something he had intended to put into the drawing. His hand paused, the pencil stilling upon the white paper, as he turned over the options in his mind.

Thinking quickly, he grabbed a post-it note, and jotted down what she had said. He could make use of that information later. He wrote down everything else she had said, her skin and her hair and her skin texture, for that would prove valuable in time. That he knew.

"Looks like mercury? So it's not mercury?" he asked.

"No."

"Good to know," he retorted, then went back to sketching. With his pencil, he sketched tiny little veins across her skin, lightly pressing the graphite against the page to make little gray streaks.

"The pattern is incorrect," came the angel's voice from beyond the door.

The artist was about to say something back, either to defend himself or apologize, but she cut him off before he could say anything. "It does not matter, though. The patterns of my veins changes very often. Even if it has never been in that particular pattern, it will in due time…"

Or so she thought.

But she didn't really care. The pattern of an angel's veins did not kill a mortal, did not cause them to wonder what they really looked like. It was the face that did. The structure, the eyes, the cheeks and lips. That was what truly mattered. And so far, he was getting it all right.

"Now…" said the artist, leaning back in his chair and taking in the sight of all he had drawn so far. "What about your eyes?"

"They are the most difficult of all," said the angel.

"I'm up for the challenge." A smirk crossed his face, but there was doubt behind it. If it was as difficult as she said they would be, ever since she had first appeared before him, he knew that it would be a challenge…a great one at that.

"Very well."

From beyond the door, the angel could see him hesitating, his fingers twitching as he made move to pick up the pencil. It sat untouched upon the pads of paper, the yellow body resting across the surface of her face where her eyes would soon be. The feeling of doubt, the taste of it and the balance of it, reached the angel from her place behind the door.

Patiently, she waited while the artist hesitated.

The angel could wait forever, for she had forever to wait. All the time in the world, within the multi-dimensions and the multiple realms and worlds and universes. Thoughts of so much time and space made her feel overwhelmed, for even though she was great and powerful, she was humbled by that which was greater and more powerful than her.

"Do the eyes on your face look like the ones on your wings?" he asked at last.

"No."

"Oh…well, okay then…"

The artist took a deep breath, picked up his pencil once more, and leaned forward over the paper. He tapped the graphite, signaling that he was ready to continue. "Tell me about your eyes," he shouted to her.

"For starters, upon my face, I have five of them."

That gave him a pause. Five eyes? He didn't draw anything down, for out of five eyes, he didn't know where to play them. He looked over his drawing once more, trying to see if he had gotten anything else wrong, if something else was misplaced. Upon her drawn face, he could see the area where two of her eyes should have gone, but the other three were still a mystery to him.

"The first two eyes are placed upon either side of my nose, just as a human's," she told the artist.

Hesitantly, he drew the first two eyes. Ovular, with small little rims of the waterlines and eyelids drooping on top. But he only made the basic shape of the eyes, for what they looked like for sure he didn't know. What if there were no pupils, no irises? He left them blank.

"I have no eyebrows. Where my eyebrows should be, just above my first set of eyes, is my second set of eyes."

The artist drew a second pair of eyes directly over her first. He didn't try to shape them like eyebrows, but let them mirror the ones below them. Ovular, with the folds of eyelids and waterlines. Still, the shape of them was all that was drawn, the insides left blank.

"For my fifth eye, it is directly in the middle of my forehead. It is centered, and smaller than the other ones. My eyelids do not close horizontally, but vertically. It makes it different from all the other eyes." She paused, listening with sensitive ears as his pencil marked upon the page. She could see him drawing the fifth eye, but before he could draw the eyelids, she said,

"The fifth eye is always closed."

The eraser brushed up against the paper, smearing away the graphite markings in a mess of gray smudges and pink rubber. He wiped the page clean, then blew away the rest of it, before correcting the drawing. The fifth eye was closed now, with the eyelashes and closed eyelids apparent.

Looked good enough.

"May I ask why it's closed?" the artist asked her.

"To look upon the face of an angel…in our true form…will kill someone. But once dead, the soul of the mortal will ascend beyond their corpse. However, if an angel were to open up their fifth eye, it will trap the soul of the dead within the body of the person. They will forever be trapped within their corpse, staring at the darkness for endless centuries as their bodies rot away."

When the angel stopped speaking, the artist's hand started shaking. It became harder to draw the fifth eye now, and his fingers were trembling so bad that he dropped the pencil down upon the papery pad beneath him.

He knew that angels were something to be feared…well, now he knew that angels were something to be feared…but that was an entirely new level of horror for him.

His mouth was dry, and his throat felt like sandpaper. Licking his lips solved nothing.

The angel waited in silence for the artist to recover himself. Minutes ticked on by before the artist was finally able to recover himself. The horror of the truth still stunned him, made his nerves tingle in fear, but he picked up the pencil once more, cleared his head, took a deep breath, and asked once more about her eyes.

"The sclera looks like molten gold…" said the angel.

The pen scratched against the post-it notes once more. This would be something he would have to come back to, after the first initial sketches were done, he had perfected the drawing, and then began to color it. But he did make little, liquid-like markings upon the eyes in her picture.

"My sclera looks like molten gold," she repeated, "and my irises are black. I suppose, to compare them, they look as black as a moonless night. I could say obsidian, but obsidian is too lifeless a material."

He took down more notes, and then scratched his pencil up against the drawing, making two circles with a hole in the middle and colored them in completely with the dark graphite of his pencil.

"And the pupils?" he asked her.

"They are white. Pure white…like that of…snow…"

He made the last notes of this.

Now he took the time to lean back and admire what he had drawn so far. It looked complete, for a sketch anyway, and the completed image of the angel did look like she said it would have. Frightening and strange and somewhat beautiful. He wasn't completely sure that she was done describing herself, so he kept his pencil at the ready.

The angel, from her place locked within his bathroom, her eyes on the mirror and the door locked, observed the picture through the eyes of the mortal artist. She saw things his way, through his thoughts, while she mixed her consciousness with his. She judged fairly, taking in what she thought she looked like.

In his mind, she could see him making mental images for what the picture would look like after he had polished it up and colored it. Fair enough, she judged; it was as accurate as a mortal could make it.

"Anything else?" he asked her.

"I do not believe so. You have seen the rest of my body…just not my face." She paused, letting the artist's thoughts linger in the air between them. "You should be able to render my body accurately, correct?"

"Let's see…" he said, leaning back in the chair.

"From when I first saw you, your body looked like this: you are eight feet tall, with skin that looks like molten bronze, and you have six wings in all. Two of your wings are folded over to cover your face, while the other four let you fly. There are eyes covering all of your wings…to help you see with your face covered, I assume…and the wings are bronze-ish in color. There were both feathers and skin on your wings. Your configuration is human-looking, for the most part.

"At first you were naked, but you didn't look naked. You have no genitals, nor any nipples on your breasts—at least what I think are breasts—and you don't have a navel, either. The nails on your fingers look like claws, and your feet have talons on them. On the bottoms of your feet, you have pads that look like a lions…"

He trailed off.

Remembering the shock he had undergone when he had first seen her—it—well, whatever—came back to him. He remembered his eyes bulging out of him, his entire body going cold as a thin sheen of sweat broke out on his skin, and his heart started racing. He was almost sure that he was having a stroke, or if not he was going crazy.

Be not afraid, she had said in a metallic-sounding voice, holding out a single hand.

He had stooped down, bat his head against the floor, terrified and unable to trust his own senses. The angel had stooped down with him, trying not to intimidate him with her stature, but he still felt threatened. Even crouching low, all eight feet of her dwarfed him in every way.

He had started to weep.

Shaking his head, he tried to rid himself of the memory. He was here now, in the safety of his own apartment, with an angel who had sworn to him that she meant him no harm. Sworn on what he had believed to be holy, and then sworn on whatever it was that she had said—for the language of the angels was a language inconceivable to mortals—so he believed that he was safe.

Trust hadn't been kindled yet, but she had done nothing to waver it.

"Is there anything else?" the artist asked the angel.

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

He waited for a long while, while the minute hand of the nearby clock ticked forever onward. The second hand made slow circles all the way around, having made a three-hundred-sixty degree turn at least five times.

"If I were to cry, I would cry blood."

That took him by surprise. Still, the artist leaned forward, jotting down what she had said upon the post-it note, and laid the pen down flat.

"Is that all?" he asked.

"Yes."

From her place inside the bathroom, the angel started to morph again. She let her angelic state disappear from her, losing all of what made her so terrifying, and adopted a human form. Her wings withered, and her eyes all closed until only two were left upon her. Her skin turned soft and brown, losing the molten texture, and the talons and claws upon her retracted back inside of her. She even tried to shrink herself, lowering herself down to six feet tall instead of a gigantic eight feet.

Soft, brown skin now covered her, looking as ordinary as possible, with small little hairs covering her, and wrinkles and fingerprints and the cellular texture. Her eyes turned an amber color, with her pupils darkening to black and her sclera turning white.

When she concluded that she looked like a normal human woman, almost all of her angelic nature concealed, she unlocked the bathroom door and stepped out.

The man sitting at the table jumped up, banging his knees against the underside of the table and then crying out in pain. With a moan, his hands reached down to grip his knees, and he fell back down into the chair. Papers and pencils and brushes all fell from the table and clattered onto the floor.

Even at six feet tall, she towered over him.

He looked straight up into her eyes, a mixture of wonder and fear within them.

Her gaze was deep, and it felt like she was squeezing his heart, talons cutting into his flesh and looking straight at his naked soul, judging every little piece of his being. He couldn't look away from those amber eyes, gazing so intensely down at him.

His heart skipped a few beats.

She knew she was terrifying him, but she kept staring at him. Finally, when it looked like he was about to vomit, she removed her eyes from his own, and went to go sit opposite of him at the table. She pulled the chair and sat down, looking away from him.

It gave him a lovely picture of her black, braided hair.

There was a mirror that she gazed into, and she looked at him that way. With the mirror, the artist looked at her and she looked back.

When looking at a mirror, even in a human guise, mirrors were often times the only way that some of them could look at an angel. Apparently, he was one of them. His demeanor started to calm, with his heart rate returning to normal and the chaos in his mind calming once more.

With a sigh of relief, he looked back down onto the sketch in his hand. Holding it up to her, facing it towards the mirror, he asked, "Is this good?"

"Yes."

A long silence stretched on between them.

She was comfortable with the silence, but it was clear he was not. He fidgeted, looked for something to do. The angel only watched him in the reflection of the mirror, somewhat bemused.

"I'm going to get something to drink," he said at last, shooting up from his chair and making a beeline to his refrigerator. Cold air seeped from the open door, and he took a bottle of champagne from the white racks within. It was cold and fizzing, and when he opened it in the sink, a wealth of foam spewed out from the top.

He had gotten the champagne to celebrate, for finally making it into an art gallery. Only problem was that he hadn't made it into the art gallery; his work had been branded as not good enough, so that champagne had chilled in the refrigerator until such time when he felt worth celebrating.

Now was certainly a good a time as any to celebrate; it was not everyday an angel graces you with their presence and demand you draw the likeness of them, that had been forever unseen by mortals.

Along with the champagne that he had in the refrigerator, there was also a wealth of chocolate covered strawberries. All little treats that he had purchased for himself in expectation that he would soon become a recognized artist.

Those dreams fell dead once more.

"Would you like some?" Despite everything, he still knew his manners.

"I don't drink," she replied in a steady voice.

"You don't drink alcohol?" he asked.

"I don't drink anything at all."

He paused while he thought.

"But can you drink?" he asked her, already reaching for a second champagne flute. "I mean, do you have the ability to?"

"I do."

He filled both of them with the golden, fizzing liquid, and brought both of the glasses over to them. He set her flute behind her, looking at her amber eyes in the reflection. Even if she did not want the drink, did not care for it, she-it-would have it behind her in case she changed her...mind.

With a strange smile, the morphed angel reached behind her and took the flute into her hand.

Her nose suddenly wrinkled.

"It looks like fizzled urine!" she proclaimed, disgust on her face.

"Well, it's not!" said he. He had already taken a couple of swigs of the champagne, and the drink was starting to go to his head. The alcohol burned his throat as he downed it, and his brain became less stressed, almost relaxed. He didn't drink often, so it didn't take much for it to affect him.

The human-formed-angel sniffed the drink before taking a small little sip.

"Well?" he asked.

"Strange."

He took another swig of the champagne. Feeling emboldened he asked, "You don't talk much, do you?"

"No."

The angel took another drink from the glass. It did taste strange to her; it tasted like boiling water, without the heat but still had the sting. Deciding she didn't like it, she slammed it back down onto the table, the liquid sloshing out of it and splashing in a mess on the floor.

"Is something bothering you?" he asked.

"Do not patronize me, mortal," she spat back. Her voice sounded like clanging metal.

Sadly, the artist looked back down at his drawing, seeing a few wet stains on the top of the page. Not a big deal, since he could still see the sketch, and it wasn't his final version anyway. He looked over the sight of the angel's face once more, that had the ability to kill him but didn't. It was only a drawing, and it could be seen by anyone.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked her.

"You just did."

"Oh, right… Can I ask you another thing?"

"You just did."

He gulped down the last of the champagne before speaking again. "Look, I'm going to ask you something."

"Okay," she said, clearly not mad or bothered in any way.

"Why did you want me to draw you?" he asked.

In the mirror, her amber eyes met his own. He could keep hold of them this time, keep a steady gaze upon her. Maybe it was the mirror, or maybe the alcohol, but he felt dwindled no more.

"Because," she said.

"Because why?"

She heaved a sigh and sat up straight.

"I will give you a long explanation.

"Mortals cannot see an angel's face. If they do see an angel's face, they will die where they stand. So angels, when approaching humans in our natural form, use our top wings to shield our face. If they look at the wings, and not our faces, they will live.

"But I wanted mortals to see my face, my true face, without dying. Let it be known. I want to world to see what we really look like."

Looking back down at his paper, and then back at her, he asked, "Why?"

"Betrayal."

He had clearly not expected her to say that.

"B-b-b-betrayal?" he stuttered. Even with his lips forming the words, he didn't really believe what he was hearing. Betrayal? he wondered. Who the hell was the angel betraying? Or perhaps the question was, what was the angel betraying? After today, he would never believe in anything anymore. If she had said that there was a leviathan in this apartment right now, he wouldn't believe in logic. He would think that this was a part of whatever inter-dimensional terrain the angel came from.

He might believe her.

"Shall I tell you more?" she asked.

"Yes! Please!" He was far too curious for his own good.

"Deity made a promise to me, and Deity broke that promise. So now, I will show the world Deity's beloved angels…"

What the hell? thought the artist. What the hell does that even mean?

She laughed a long, loud laugh, one that sounded like the pounding of a hammer as a blacksmith shaped metal. It rang throughout the apartment and reverberated off the walls, filling the entire place with her strange sound. Even in mortal guise, she couldn't hide the supernatural tone of her voice. He put his hands to his ears, trying to block it out.

Even when she had stopped laughing, the echoes still filled the room.

"I am sorry. Your poor ears," the angel said, shifting her eyes around the mirror. "I don't find if funny. I laugh because. Just know this: Deity broke a promise made to me, and now I will do this to retaliate." Still, the man at the table did not understand. "Revenge? No, not the correct word. Defiance, perhaps. That word is closer, yes?"

"Mmmm…I still don't understand."

A sigh escaped from her. "There is a long and complex history behind all of this," she said.

"I have plenty of time to listen."


	2. I Chose the Name Yelena

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I chose the name Yelena, yet all they ever call me is Lilith."

The angel knew she had chosen the right person to capture her true appearance when she saw the first initial sketches. When the artist was gone, the angel sometimes materialized back onto the earthly realm far below her home dimension and surveyed his work with a keen eye.

She stayed in her true form while she did, for she had nothing to hide. And if she did, what was it that she would fear? Nothing. For right now, in this very moment, she could sense that nothing would happen. Nothing to fear, if fear would be an emotion that she could feel.

Angels created and then risen had only two emotions: love, and not love. If an angel did not feel love towards someone, then they did not feel anything. A surge of something more would be a bad sign, and the angel felt the sense of something chemical rising within her. An emotion that crept up her chest and into her throat, through her head and into her eyes. Down her arms, slithering around her wings and penetrating her hundreds of eyes along the feathers and membrane.

An uncharacteristic sigh escaped her dark lips.

She knew what was coming, though she wanted to delay it no longer. And yet at the same time, she wanted it never to come. A brain was forming within her, something wet and watery and muscular and organic. Something that reeked of human tissue and lower dimensions.

When the artist crawled back into his small apartment that night, he was scared. Scared to see the eight foot supernatural angelic being sitting at his dining table once more, her giant wings folded tight over her face, and the metallic eyes that covered her body looking all around at the drawings and paintings that he had made.

"They are beautiful," said the angel, in her average-yet-so-abnormal-and-disturbing voice. She let her bronze-like fingers dance delicately over the giant canvas page in front of her. The white of the page was stained with dozens of different paint colors in various shapes in sizes.

That was all a picture was. A series of things that are far too abstract to be anything on their own, grouped and bonded together to make something that made sense. It was much like this dimension, though the angel said nothing of it. The artist was far too curious about the other dimensions for his own good, and he wanted to know. Know all of her secrets, all of the tales of stories of wherever it was she came from. Know the inner workings of someone as supernatural as she. Know more about everything. Know more than a mere mortal should.

"Thank you," the artist said, when he finally found his voice.

The angel said nothing in return.

The artist set his bags down upon the floor with a loud thunk, the depressing weight finally relieved from his shoulders. Carefully, he made his way across the room, from the threshold of his door and closer to where the angel sat upon the small wooden chair, dwarfed beneath her frame. He stepped as though she were a murderer or some kind of dangerous predator, waiting to go off on him and eat him and tear his flesh apart. He approached her like a human would approach a wounded wild animal, unsure and uncertain and prepared to flee at the slightest sign of trouble.

"I will not hurt you," the angel told the human.

"I know," he replied back, but still his voice wavered. Even so, she was just so intimidating that he couldn't help but be frightened.

Once he had gotten close enough to her, he could see what specific artwork she held within her bronze hands. It was one of the first images that he had drawn; a very plain and basic work that was only her portrait. No thrills, no poses, no added detail. Just her face, and her face alone. Flanked by her obsidian, braided hair and her strong, gigantic wings. The wings were pulled far back, away from her face, showing her features in all of their terrifying glory.

There were all five of her eyes, the central eye on her forehead closed as if sleeping peacefully. The bronzed, metallic skin along her forehead and cheeks that looked molten, the lips that were stained like unpolished, wild rubies with a hint of a smile upon her lips. The black sclera, the golden irises, the pale white pupils.

The angel noted that in this drawing, where he had rendered her features so accurately, he had also given her a somewhat thoughtful expression. Her eyes were fixed on the viewer, that much was true. But it was not a challenging glare, nor an uncaring one. It was softer, sweeter. Like she was listening to a story being told, or watching a cheerful scene from far away of a family reunited.

Such a peaceful, contemplating expression the angel did not often wear upon her face, but she thought that she looked intriguing that way.

The artist had rendered her to look like she had thoughts and feelings for the viewers, like she had a soul so complex and deep that so many emotions were showing within her strange eyes all at once. Like her heart was made of flesh and muscles and blood; like she had the brainpower to feel more than one thing at once, like she had the capacity to love a human.

She didn't tell him that she couldn't look that way. Angels had no love for humans; and yet here he was, painting her like she cared for humanity.

It wasn't just in this painting that he had rendered her like that. There were many more paintings and drawings and rough sketches throughout his small apartment that gave her a caring look more often that she would have guessed. He made her look like what demon would almost look like; thoughtful, powerful, in control and yet so wrapped up within their own thoughts and feelings, projecting themselves out into the human world.

"What do you think?" the artist asked the angel, snapping her out of her web of thought.

"I quite like it," she said, pointing a finger at the page.

"Thank you, that means a lot to me," he said. A broad smile stretched across the artist's face, and he couldn't help himself but become a bit giddy and erratic. "I worked really, really hard on all of these paintings."

"I can tell," she replied again. The more she spoke, the less on-edge the artist became. Her voice was almost starting to sound familiar to him, almost.

The angel set the large canvas notepad back upon the dining room table, not looking at it for another moment. Silently, she stood up, back to her normal eight foot height. The artist watched with horrified curiosity as she pushed the chair back and made her way to the rest of the canvases that were scattered throughout the apartment complex. Various sized artworks were on shelves and lined up against the walls, piling on top of one another so you had to flick through them like files in a filing cabinet.

"I particularly like this one," the angel said, pulling out a fairly large canvas that rested behind several others. It was large, and covered with some many coats of paint that the original texture couldn't be seen. But the paint had long ago dried, and it was ready to be seen by the world. All the artist needed was to finish this collection that he had begun, find a distributor for his work, and…

The picture needed a name. All these pictures needed names.

The artist watched as the angel pulled out the large canvas and set it down upon the dining table, right on top of the notepad that she had left out. Reaching out a hand, the artist spun the painting around to see it right-side-up.

"Oh, I love this one!" he said, his voice as strong as he could make it.

There was she, the angel, her entire body in all its full glory.

She was flying, in the night sky, her six wings all spanned out around her body making her look like some kind of limbed flower. The background was deep and dark in its colors; blues stretching around blacks that faded into purples and teals, and wisps of yellow and white as the faraway moon shone behind her, giving her an illuminating appearance. Probably to make her look more holy. Bright, shining white stars penetrated the darkness of the sky, their color bleeding into the canvas around them, making the sky seemed studded with harsh points of focus.

And then herself…

All eight feet of her was drawn, her grand and imposing stature made to look even more like a titanic creature. Her skin and eyes and hair, all metallic looking. Her hair, painted to look as smooth and polished as honed obsidian, flew out all around her as she ascended within the night that wrapped around her.

The angel had one hand outstretched towards the heavens, her elongated fingers curling like claws as they sought out an unseen pinpoint of light. In the picture, she looked so close to receiving the orb of light, and yet the look on her face made it looked like she strained in her task.

It was almost eerie how accurate this was.

Maybe not specifically accurate to her, but to someone else she knew far too well.

Another thing about the painting: she was not naked, but wearing a long, black dress. Her arms were still bare, along with a greater part of her chest, but from her breasts and then flowing down far past where her feet would be was a thick black dress drawn onto her.

She cocked her head to the side. It did quite fit the painting; the way the soft black folds of the dress wrapped around the night and the way the night seemed to bless the fabric she was drawn wearing with glimmering reflections of the stars and moon.

"This is actually one of my favorites," the artist continued on, as if there had never been a pause in their conversation. "When I was creating it, I tried to make the brush stroke style unique. So what I did was combine the techniques of old Italian Renaissance period paintings and mixed that style with contemporary watercolor painting techniques."

Pause.

"Pretty neat, huh?"

The angel made no response, so the artist shrunk back down again. A soft, silent sigh escaped his lips and he made his body calm once more. Here he was, getting all worked up again. It was just like he always did; he got over-excited and then ended up ruining what he was working towards.

If that didn't happen, I might already have a place within a gallery exhibit, he thought to himself.

The angel slid the canvas off of the table, and put it back within the leaning pile of paintings that he'd created. She set the picture in front, admiring it for only a split second, then went back to rummaging through his work once more. A plethora of colors flashed before her eyes as she flicked through the works.

Finally, she settled upon one. All her eyes turned to fix on it, studying it while it sat sandwiched in between two other pieces, before she decided to pull it out, too. Like before, she set the canvas on top of the dining room table, and the artist spun the painting so that he could see it correctly.

"This one perplexes me," said the angel.

The artist furrowed his brown, puzzled, and looked down at the canvas once more, trying to see it however it was that she saw it. Somehow, he just couldn't see what was so perplexing about it. But then again, he'd been in his mind when he'd made it, so he knew what he'd been thinking, and what he was trying to convey to the audience.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because…out of all the paintings I've ever seen within your house, all of them depict me fairly accurately. Except for this one." She stretched out her arm and pointed directly towards the face of the woman on the canvas. "Even when I take on a more human appearance, I do not look like this being."

"I was going for something more artistic with this one," replied the artist in a timid voice.

"More artistic?" the angel asked. Her voice was so weird to him, still, that he couldn't be sure whether it was genuine curiosity or anger or amusement that was in her voice. He wasn't sure of any of it. "How?"

"Well, I've been going through my books more and more again, back when I used to be a bit more devout in my faith and all…well, I couldn't help but notice that you're awfully similar to Lilith."

The angel remained silent for a long time.

The artist wondered if he'd overstepped his bounds. Wondered what she was thinking within her spiritual head. A nervous sweat broke out along his hairline.

"Lilith…?"

The angel's voice was nothing more than a whisper, but it still was loud enough to make shivers go down his spine. Goosebumps arose in his arms, beneath his sleeves that he wore. Clenching his fists, he prepared for more silence or her next words.

Dealing with angels, he thought with a mental groan of aggravation.

"I don't recall this," the angel said at last.

The artist sat up straight, preparing himself to explain it. He filled his lungs once more, anticipation growing within him. When the eyes in her wings looked up at him with something akin to expectation, he decided then was the time to speak.

"Lilith is a woman from the Torah. She is very common in Judaism."

The angel looked…confused almost.

But confusion wasn't something that angels had. She knew everything, or at least she had once, long ago. If someone had said Lilith to her back then, she would have instantly known who and what he was talking about. She would have known every story there was to tell, and the stories that hadn't been told in centuries. She would have known the entire history, she would have known the origin, she would have known even what he thought in his personal perception of the 'Lilith.'

"And she's not just Jewish!" said the artist. "She appears all over the world, mainly in Mesopotamia and Babylon and Sumer. All those ancient places. Ever heard of a līlīt?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said confidently.

"Well, I thought that what you are and how you look right now are very similar. I mean, bird creatures of supernatural origins and mystical power and what not…" He trailed off.

Her eyes went back down onto the canvas outstretched before her.

"Yes, I think I see now," she said.

Instant understanding exploded within the accumulating liquid of her brain. Understanding and perception, knowledge and intellect. Memory, of all things. Lilith. Yes, she remembered the tale of Lilith now, and how long ago it had been since she had last heard that name. It still sounded strange to her ears, to hear a name so forgotten on the air. She remembered that hundreds of years ago, back when she walked on Earth for a reason that was fading from memory, people used to call her Lilith back then, too.

She had grown tired of explaining that was not her name. She wanted not to be called that. Of course, everyone that ever saw her and spoke to her did as she bid. Afraid of invoking her divine fury. For which the angel had none of, but they feared her all the same.

"What is your name?" the artist suddenly asker her.

"I do not have one," the angel replied.

"You don't have a name?!" he asked, too stunned to be polite about it. Even after the words had escaped his lips, he didn't regret what he'd said.

"No. Why should I? Names are something human."

"Well, I mean… No name at all?" The artist thought, pausing in his words. "Can't you make one?"

"Make a name for myself?" the angel could have been amused, but the artist couldn't tell. "Alright," she said, and went into a long period of silence.

Now, as the angel sat still, all six of her wings wrapped around her body, cocooning around her entire she looked like a giant egg in the center of the room. All her eyes closed, and he was left with only feathery skin to look at. It comforted far more than he cared to admit. To not have hundreds of eyes upon him at once.

So he left the folded up, thinking angel in the dining room and headed for the kitchen. He casually flicked on the light, not even stopping to locate the switch. He merely slammed his flat palm up against the wall and somehow it made the lights turn on. He went straight to the fridge, opening up the door and being met with a rush of cold air on his body. He shivered, since beads of sweat still lingered on him, and he closed the door a little to stop the onset rush.

Leaning over, he surveyed the contents of the fridge, rummaging around with eager hands as he tried to find something that looked appetizing.

A jar of pickles shoved to the back, old leftovers from takeout menus shoved to the front. Sliced bread and avocados, more leftovers. Mostly Chinese food, but some Italian as well. He pulled one container out, pulled the lid off, and sniffed it. Smelled good enough, so he grabbed a fork and started in on the food.

Walking back into the dining room, he saw that the angel had unfolded her wings. Every single one of them. Her face met him squarely, two eyes locked in on his. She'd taken a human form once more, shrinking herself down in stature and creating skin that looked like skin, and hair that looked like hair. She looked almost normal, with white sclera and dark brown eyes that were speckled with flakes of gold.

"I have chosen the name Yelena," the angel said to him.

"Yelena?" he repeated, dropping the food down onto the table before him. "Okay. Why?"

"Because," was all that she said.

"Okay. Yelena. It's pretty. I like it."

"I do not care if you like it or not," responded she. Her voice still had that cold edge to it, and hints of the fact that she was missing a voice box. "With that, I leave," Yelena said, and stood up. When the artist looked up to watch her leave, he'd found that she had already gone. He was left alone in his apartment once more, his artwork all around him and his dinner before him.

Still, he had no idea what it was that she was planning or aiming at. No idea what she wanted. She had told him much about ambition and thoughts and feelings, about emotion and the fear that humans have towards themselves. They had talked long into the night on the night she had first visited him, but in the end it had only left him with more questions.

All he knew was that she answered to someone named Deity (or as she constantly said, Deity is Deity) and that she wanted revenge on Deity for something. He still knew so little about what was happening.

Deep down, he wondered if he'd gone crazy and was hallucinating the entire thing.

Either way, he thought as he looked back to the stacked canvases, the things I created from this are wonderful. I think I might finally get into a gallery. That seemed to be a good prospect to him. The only prospect in fact. He was no idiot; he knew that in whatever game the angel...Yelena...was playing, he was nothing more than a pawn. A pawn in a game so grand and terrifying, but still a part of it in the end. So rejoice in your work, said something far off and deep down within him.

You never know what might happen to you for aiding her.


End file.
